It would take a Foxconn worker 14 months to save enough to buy an iPhone 5

If a Foxconn factory worker decided to start saving up for the latest version of the iPhone or iPad today, by the time he or she had enough money to buy it, it would already be obsolete.

A general statement like that probably comes as no surprise to anyone who is at all familiar with the working conditions at the overseas component manufacturer, but it is interesting to actually crunch the numbers and see just how much of a disparity there is between you and the people who make the products you buy.

That was the subject of a blog post by self-proclaimed nerd Rob Sim. His analysis provides a mathematical value to the irony of laborers in Asia who are surrounded by Apple product components, yet will probably never own an Apple product. According to his calculations, Foxconn workers who save all of their disposable income (a whopping $59.50 per month) would have enough money to buy the latest iPad in about 10 months. Of course by then, the latest iPad would be an entirely different model than when they started saving. For an unlocked iPhone 5, it would take about 14 months of careful saving.

Those numbers are based on a six-day work week at $17 per day and a cost of living amount of $382.50 per month.

So what is the point of these calculations? Sim wrote that even he doesn’t know exactly what to take away from this, other than the fact that it seems pretty unfair. If nothing else, it certainly makes everyone else feel pretty good about their living situation.

Apple has taken big steps to ensure that Foxconn complies with all of the local labor laws, but when it comes to raising the wages, it is deafeningly quiet.